The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

#695 – Making The Invisible, Visible with Sam Aldhaher

Listen Later

Welcome Sam Aldhaher, power engineer and 3D graphic artist!

  • Sam has always been interested in art…and power engineering
  • He primarily works in Blender and has been for 5-6 years
  • Inputs and outputs
  • Starting from Altium / KiCad for eCAD
  • Blender doesn’t accept step files, it works with meshes like STL
  • KiCad -> Blender is a good flow, as there are add-ons to import KiCad
  • Making a good visulalization is all about lighting, materials
  • Building library of models
  • Modeling magnetic fields
  • Research in wireless power
  • openEMS vtk format
  • The marjority of tooling is glued together with python
  • ElectroMag Nodes – Sam‘s tool – $1
  • Right hand rule
  • Developing intuition
  • Elmer finite element solver
  • Past guest Katerina Galitskaya also visualized RF and talked about the differences of testingi n a chamber vs building a visualization
  • FastHenry is inductance tool that was created in 80s at MIT for wirebonds. Didn’t have a visualization front end, like SPICE
  • 3D whiteboard
  • Using Blender to prototype and then taking it to other tools (CST, Ansys)
  • Validating on the bench with an impedance analyzer
  • Simulating power loss is difficult
  • Quality factor
  • “CAD is too perfect”
  • Adding surface imperfections
  • Node system is similar to simulink, adding blocks (Chris also thought this sounded like the effects in Davinci Resolve)
  • Lighting
  • Making the background dark means you don’t need to have far field details
  • Tutorials
  • Blender Guru – how to make a donut
  • Sam’s video about how to draw components on a PCB in Blender
  • Doing the same with Geometry nodes in Blender
  • Ability to create things procedurally
  • How to create ICs in Blender
  • Using LLMs for python glue code
  • What is a shader?
  • HardOps tool, simplifies workflow (shuffle button)
  • Visualizing an Inverted F antenna in Blender
  • Remembering that videos are just still frames in order
  • Electric fields propagating on the antenna itself
  • Radiated electric fields (red and blue and black)
  • OpenEMS generates GBs of data
  • Blender geomtry goes out to OpenEMS so it’s geometrically linked
  • What if it was a ceramic antenna instead of a metal inverted F?
  • Simulating 60 GHz from a radar chipset
  • Meshing – sample points in space
  • simulating points in time
  • Impacts of stubs / squares on microwaves
  • Human Hand Interaction with 60GHz Electromagnetic waves
  • SAR simulations – how much heat do you generate
  • Simulating motor windings on a PCB
  • The above was a collaboration with past guest Carl Bugeja
  • When to switch from near field (electro) vs far field (openEMS)
  • Calculating values with inductance calculator
  • FastHenry tool on Github
  • Sam’s work on artstation
  • ZS smart watch
    • Fast track if listeners want to get better at this art
      • Learn blender – donut
      • KiCad -> Blender reference
      • Play with geometries nodes (ElectroMag Nodes, Fast Henry)
      • Find Sam on social
        • LinkedIn
        • Twitter/X
        • YouTube
        • Instagram
        • EEVblog forum
          • ...more
          View all episodesView all episodes
          Download on the App Store
          The Amp Hour Electronics PodcastBy The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)
          • 4.9
          • 4.9
          • 4.9
          • 4.9
          • 4.9

          4.9

          226 ratings

          More shows like The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

          View all
          The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

          The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

          288 Listeners

          This Week in Tech (Audio) by TWiT

          This Week in Tech (Audio)

          3,060 Listeners

          Security Now (Audio) by TWiT

          Security Now (Audio)

          2,013 Listeners

          Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

          Software Engineering Daily

          628 Listeners

          Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy

          Talk Python To Me

          583 Listeners

          SpyCast by SpyCast

          SpyCast

          1,531 Listeners

          SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Cyber Security Podcast (Stormcast) by Johannes B. Ullrich

          SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Cyber Security Podcast (Stormcast)

          651 Listeners

          Embedded by Logical Elegance

          Embedded

          189 Listeners

          Smashing Security by Graham Cluley

          Smashing Security

          317 Listeners

          Darknet Diaries by Jack Rhysider

          Darknet Diaries

          8,078 Listeners

          Physics World Weekly Podcast by Physics World

          Physics World Weekly Podcast

          83 Listeners

          Practical AI by Practical AI LLC

          Practical AI

          209 Listeners

          Hackaday Podcast by Hackaday

          Hackaday Podcast

          64 Listeners

          Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by Latent.Space

          Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

          101 Listeners

          Robinson's Podcast by Robinson Erhardt

          Robinson's Podcast

          269 Listeners